Introduction

Welcome to andeye’s Higher Photography course. Please watch the video below, or read the transcript. Then either have a go at the exercise mentioned in it, or scroll down for a quicker option.

Key points

Photography is expressing yourself with light;
every photo is a selective, two-dimensional slice of a moving, three-dimensional world.
Course map:
1. Introduction
2. How
3. Focus
4. Exposure
5. Location
6. Lighting
7. VE & Composition
8. Equipment
9. Post Production
10. Influences & Options
11. Project
12. Exam
Higher Photography (SQA) assumes no prior knowledge; we’re not affiliated with SQA.
You can start with a phone; schools can supply kit with variable aperture for later tasks.
We will use Affinity Photo 2 (free for schools) for post production, but principles transfer to any editor.

Transcript

Rather than wasting a thousand words on my credentials, I thought I’d start with a picture that I made. Actually, my wife Laura pressed the shutter release for this one. She’s a much better photographer, but she doesn’t like public speaking, so I’ll be doing the talking here. So, Laura was out on a rock with a couple of assistants holding umbrellas so the camera didn’t get soaked. The rock was out in the sea. Um, some other assistants with towels and the client were on the rock next to Shandre, who’s the model that you can see. They were just out to the of the frame to the right. I was then perched on a third rock between them where I could see what the sea was doing, shout directions to Shandre, and let Laura know when to expose each frame as she couldn’t see when the waves were going to be coming in to hit the rocks and cause that splash. This was all part of a commission for a hotel chain who were opening a new spa. There was, of course, a full risk assessment for the shoot, but I definitely recommend that you don’t try anything nearly as risky for your project. This is more an example of one of the many, many places that a career in photography could take you. Hi, I’m Martin and welcome to our higher photography course. The graphi in photography is Greek for drawing, painting, writing, or describing. And photo means light. So, in this course, we’re going to be expressing ourselves with light. We’re going to take the light that you can see bouncing off the world and bend it through lenses so that we can capture an image. Just like any other art form, a photograph is not an exact copy of the scene that we’re looking at. Even if we had a perfect lens and camera, the image would still be a frozen two-dimensional representation of the original moving three-dimensional scene. The choices and compromises that we make when selecting and controlling equipment that we use to capture this two-dimensional slice of time is what turns photography from science into art. And that art is what we’re here to learn about. How you can represent your personal thoughts and ideas visually through photography. Higher photography, for anyone who just randomly found this video, is a Scottish qualifications authority course normally taken in the final year of high school here in Scotland. If you’re sitting higher photography, I’d encourage you to check out this page on SQA’s website. But if you’re not, I’d just say that it normally takes around 1/5if of an academic year and it doesn’t assume that you know anything at all about photography at the start, but it should give you a solid understanding of the fundamentals of photography and enable you to express yourself fluently through photography by the end. For full disclosure, I should say that we’re not in any way affiliated to SQA. I’m not even a school teacher. We’re just putting these videos together to help a family member. You can pop down uh to the description for a set of links to all the videos in this series. But in brief, after the introduction, we’re going to kick off by quickly considering how you create a photographic image by using a lens to focus light. Exposure is the other main technical consideration with cameras. So, we’ll spend some time getting to grips with the exposure triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. We’ll then consider photography on location and in the studio and look more into lighting before we dive into the most fundamental considerations of visual elements and composition. We’ll then contemplate gear, things like lenses, cameras, tripods, and various other bits of kit that may be helpful. It is not my intention that you’ll need to pay a single penny to ace your higher photography. You can do an awful lot with nothing more than the camera on your phone. But by this stage in the course, you’ll know the importance of variable aperture, which is something that you don’t tend to get with camera phones. Your school should be able to provide you with all the kit that you need for higher photography. Now, if you’re not actually studying higher photography at school, you might want to jump to this section before we do the practical exercise on aperture. All will be explained. Post-production then is everything that I used to do in a dark room which with digital photography we do on a computer or your phone. There are loads of excellent apps that you can use for this but in these videos I’m going to be using Affinity Photo 2. It is brilliant software that can handle more than everything you need for hire and even professional photography. It’s also free for schools which is the reason that we’re using it in this course. And indeed for everyone else, a lifetime license is cheaper than a single year subscription to Photoshop like or Lightroom itself or Capture One or any of the other options that I can recall having used professionally. Now, the reason I mention it now is that it would be really sensible to check now if your school has it or wants to get it. Um, otherwise, please let me know in the comments if you’re using other photo editing software and we’ll see if we can help out with that. The principles are pretty much the same. whatever software you use, it’s just kind of where you want to click. Anyway, we’ll then look at things that have influenced photographers in the past, and we’ll look at the photographers that you may want to be influenced by, some of them anyway, and we’ll contemplate the myriad creative options that you have with photography. And then you’ll be ready for the best bit, the project. Now, this will give you a set of eight images that you can be proud of for the rest of your life. I studied photography in my sixth year way back last century before higher photography was even invented. But I still like to have a look at my Scott Vec module portfolio every few years. I might even share them with you in the project video. So finally, we’ll round up the course with a little exam prep. Uh, speaking of which, if you’re watching these videos again as part of your exam revision, you can probably skip to the next one now and stop each of the following videos when you get to the exercise part because at the end of each video, I’m going to set you off on an exercise. I would thoroughly recommend that you complete it to let the concepts sink in and to demonstrate to yourself that you understand each of the key concepts from each video. If it’s the night before the exam though, you probably want to skip the exercises. So, for today’s exercise, I want you to take whatever camera you have. Your phone is perfect for this. You can use it in full auto mode. Your mission is to choose a single word that represents a feeling or an idea. It could be energy. It could be old. It could be cold or joy or any other word. Then go and create eight photos that communicate your chosen word. Don’t think about settings. Think only about what you see, what you’re going to include in your frame and the story that you’re trying to tell. The goal here isn’t to create a masterpiece. It’s to begin the practice of thinking like a photographer. It’s to start a conversation using nothing but light as your language. Now, to make the exercise even more valuable, please write down as you go or at the end some reflections on the process. Particularly anything that went well, anything that you enjoyed, and also any areas where you struggle to express your thoughts in the photos or where they just didn’t come out as you expected, maybe better, maybe worse. Save these notes somewhere safe as we’re going to need them again later on in the course. Right. Off you go!

Extra Thoughts

The Higher Photography course encourages candidates to communicate personal thoughts, feelings and ideas using photography. It aims to develop technical and creative skills with photographic media, techniques, and processes.
Candidates will gain knowledge and understanding of various photographic practices and develop problem-solving, critical thinking, and reflective practice skills.
A key aspect is understanding the impact of social, cultural, historical, and scientific influences on photographers’ work and practice. The course fosters critically self-reflective autonomous learners.
The course assessment comprises two components: a question paper (30 marks) and a project (100 marks), with the project making up 77% of the overall marks.

Exercise

Take whatever camera you have, a smartphone would be perfect for this.
Use it in its default full auto mode. Don’t think about settings. Think only about what you see, what you’re going to include in your frame and the story that you’re trying to tell.
Grab a pencil then create eight photos of it.
If you don’t have a story to tell, then just try to take 8 photos of the pencil that are as different from each other as you can.
Write down some reflections on the process. Particularly anything that went well, anything that you enjoyed, and also any areas where you struggle to express your thoughts in the photos or where they just didn’t come out as you expected - maybe better, maybe worse.
Save your notes somewhere safe as we’re going to need them again later on in the course.